Curbside electric vehicle charging stations will be available in each ward across D.C., as part of a new pilot program aiming to make the chargers more accessible.
The first location, near The Festival Center in Adams Morgan, was unveiled Tuesday. Two curbside stations will be added near community centers or local government facilities in the coming months.
“We are really excited about offering up some curbside charging,” said Sharon Kershbaum, director of D.C.’s Department of Transportation.
“We know in the denser areas of the city, where people don’t have garages or driveways or alley parking, one of the greatest barriers to pursuing an EV is that they just don’t have convenient, reliable areas where they can charge their car.”
The company It’s Electric is launching the program with help from a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, Kershbaum said. Pepco is installing the stations.
The single-port, level two chargers require drivers to bring their own cables. Using the It’s Electric app, the cost is $0.52 per kilowatt-hour for up to four hours. Signage indicates there’s a four hour limit.
At the Adams Morgan curbside location, the energy for the chargers is coming from The Festival Center, which will receive a portion of the sales.
“The issue for urban EV drivers is not so much the range, but the accessibility of charging,” said Jon Hyman, an EV owner who lives in Northwest. “Not everyone has a garage, not everyone’s going to be charging at their parking lots, at some office park kind of out of town.”
The city’s Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are being consulted in the process of picking the locations of the other charging stations, according to a news release.
The pilot will help the city create guidelines for a permit program allowing private companies to install and operate EV charging stations in D.C.
“In general, we always have high demand for curbside space,” Kershbaum said. “There is not enough curbside space to meet all of the cars that we have, and as the city grows, that becomes harder and harder. So it’s always going to be a trade off, and we’re trying to be thoughtful about finding that balance, but that’s an ongoing challenge.”
Amber Perry, Pepco’s regional president, said it’s “real when we think about range anxiety. These plugins are really going to help this community.”
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